\. . .- fJJ" CJ é>O!Ø -w.< ç .. \ J ',uiii;ii IIj) I .... (" 'Ir 26 dozen other labs have imitated it. The job of writing the verses has virtually paralyzed research work in some of them. The only rule is th.at the verse ,/ ought to include a lot of technical lan- guage. Lederle, for example, came up with a pippin this Yßar . It was written by Dr. T. H. Jukes, one of the discov- erers of the use of antihiotics as a feed supplemen t for anImals, and it ended: 'Santa's reindeer come from the northern aurora Nourished by rumen microflora.' " \: /Ith that, Dr. Hutner gave us a wave and plunged reindeerlike into the throng, and we found ourself talking with Dr. Merrill W. Chase, of the Rockefeller Institute, whom we remem- bered as the leader of a crusade to have the Bacteriologists' status changed, for tax purposes, from that of an aSSOCIa- tion of tradesmen to that of a SCIentific organization. "Crusade's bogged down in red tape," Dr. Chase informed us when we asked him about its progress, "but we're not through yet. Like to sit with some interesting people at lunch? " We said we would, and when lunch was announced, he led us to a table- ful of bright-looking young bacteriolo- gists, who turned out to be colleagues of hIS at the Rockefeller Institute. Our notes made during the ensuing meal record the following remarks: "I'm going to present a paper on bac- teriophages of streptococci. Remember that poem about the big bugs eating the littler bugs, ad infinitum? " "Dr. Chase is a gredt man. Among the tops in immunol- " ogy. "Dubos is working on an- other book. He never feels happy in himself unless he has a book going." Between lunch and the beginning of the paper-presenting period, we hunted for Dr Wayne W U mbreit, of Merck, whom we recal1ed as a holder of the belief that scientific papers ought to be written in the style of the Homeric epics. Dr. U mbreit was not In the house, but after listening, bemused, to several of the papers, we concluded that there may be something to his theory. Finally, our ears ringing with resounding periods lIke "sulfonamides and experImental histoplasmosis," "lysis hy phage on agar plates," and "defibrinated rabbit's blood," we fared forth Into the bug- filled aIr of Thirtv-third Street. ,/ . S IGN in the rooms of the Hotel Normandy, Belo Horizonte, \1inas Geraes, Brazil: "Guests behaving in- convenJentlv wIll be asked to leave the ,/ hotel immediatelv." ,/ Thinking Fast C HILDREN of various ages, sizes, and degrees of skill will be taking part in skating races and a B.gure-skating exhibition this Saturday at the Wollman ,/ Memorial Rink, in Centra] Park. The 1l1zr1=or IS sponsoring the affair, with the blessing of the Parks Department, and most of the contestants will be children who have learned what they know of ,/ speed and figures from the city's senior ice-skating instructor, Paul von Gassner. Mavbe you weren't aware that the city ,/ ,/ ,/ has any ice-skating instructors; we weren't until we met and talked with him at the Wollman Rink the other da} . A small man with a big smile, brown hair, bright eyes, and a passion for teach- ing, Mr. von Gassner so fired us with enthusiasm for his art that we found ourself hankering to be ten again, with strong ankles, a knit cap over our ears, and all day to spend on figure eights. Resting his polo-coated elbows on the railing of the rink, Mr. von Gassner pointed out that very few cities in the country have their own skating rinks and that New York IS especially fortu- nate in having two-the ""Tollman and the FlushIng Meadows Rink, which is indoors and is used half for roller-skat- ing and half for ice-skating. "N ew York is also fortunate in being the only cit} I know that offers free skating in- struction to children," Mr. von Gassner saId. "That's where I come In. My twen- ty-two assistants and I give lessons free to children under fourteen every Saturday and school holi- ,/ ,/ day from early October through the Easter vacation. We also give paid les- sons, of course, to both children and adults-how else could we earn a liv- ing? - but the free ones are the real chaUenge. The children who sign up for them have to pass a rudimentary test to show they know how to skate a bIt back- ,/ wardand forward and how tostop. Then my instructors and I go to work on them, in groups of up to two hundred kids at a time, and let me telJ you in the end we turn out some pretty good skaters" Mr. von Gassner is a pretty good skater himself; in fact, he was a pretty good skater at four "I was born in Budapest, which had the first outdoor artificial skating rink in the world," he said. "The whole town skated. At eleven, I won my first championship- the Hungarian Junior National. Look- ing back, I think I must have practIced nine days a week, every week. I went to the German Naval Academv, at Klel, ,/ and got a degree in civIl engineering, and after the First World War I attend- ed Trinity College, Cambridge I used to fly over to Switzerland weekends and ,/ teach skating in order to make enough mone} to continue my educatIon. I grad- uated from Cambridge in 1 922, with degrees in electrical and mechanical en- gineering, and expected to become an engineer, but there weren't any jobs, and later that year I came to this coun- try. I mixed engineering and skating unti] the crash, after which I devoted all my time to teaching skating. I took over the ice-skating instruction at Playland, in Rye, in 1 934, and spent the next SJX- teen years there I've been working for the city SInce 1950." As for credentials, Mr. von Gassner added, he is a United States Figure Skating Association Gold Dance Medallist, of which there are only about a hundred, and the author of a well-received skaters' manual en- titled "Figure and Dance Skating." We watched as half a dozen groups of children diligently ground out figure eights on the Wollman RInk. There were perhaps twenty in each group, and they all appeared to have got the hang of the eights qUIte nicely; at any rate, nobody went down. i\. weary-lookIng blond instructress skated up to Mr. von Gassner, braked, and shook her pretty head. "My voice is gone, just gone," she O d " y , d o fi " O d M sal. ou re olng ne, sal r. von Gassner, patting her shoulder. The girl skated back to her circling charges, and Mr von Gassner went on to say that competitive skating is fiendishly hard work. "You have to train for it as you train for ballet," he told us. "There are a hundred and sixty-eight compulsory figures to master. You have to get the music you skate to down pat and be killed in expression, execution, grace, coverage of the rink, and flow of mo- tion. Above all, you have to be harmo- nious. You're going thirty-five or forty miles an hour, and the trick is to think from five to ten mIles an hour faster than that." He waved a hand toward the children on the ice "Most of those kids will never skate for anything but fun," he said. "Still, we get a real skater now and then. Three years ago, we signed up a couple of youngsters who could hardly stand on skates, and they became the Eastern Junior Pair Champions. One of our proudest achievements." Replacements A FRIEND of ours, resident In Paris, found himself short of laun- dered shirts a couple of davs before